I love article marketing and part of getting your blog posts and articles ranking well on Google and the other search engines has to do with a few things including on page seo, but what is on-page seo exactly?

In a nutshell, on page SEO is nothing more than making sure that you post or article is optimized for the search bots from the search engines and there are specific items that you want to make sure that your post has in place so that your site will appear and hopefully will be more relevant than the next guy. When you are in the business of learning to make money online anywhere, this stuff starts to look quite important.

Start The On Page SEO Process With Good Keyword Research

With the proper on page SEO, I have seen my blog posts rank on the 1st page of Google and even the coveted #1 spot within hours of writing a post, so this stuff really is important. Now I do want to make clear that the most important factor in achieving good results with the search engines is still going to be your initial keyword research. This always seems to be such a hassle for some, but you need to learn it. If you aren’t interested in learning good keyword and key phrase research then just call yourself lazy or stupid and move on down the road, I have no time for you!

OK, let’s assume you’ve done your keyword research and you’ve found a few winners. Out of all of those phrases that you have found one in particular stands out and you decide that you are going to write a quick blog post and this is where the on page SEO starts. You’ve done your research and have enough info to write about the subject and you write a pretty good article about 500 to 700 words minimum. Good start.

Keyword Density As It Relates to On Page SEO

You want to make sure that your keyword density is somewhere around 1.5% to 2.5%. That means for every 100 words or so in your article you want your keyword or key phrase in the body twice. That’s fairly easy if you have found a key phrase that is easy to write on. Keyword density is the first element of on page SEO. Make sure your article reads well and doesn’t sound like you are forcing the key phrases in the article.

On Page SEO: Header Tags

If you notice this particular article about on page SEO, you will notice that there are sub-titles over certain paragraphs and they are highlighted in size and perhaps bold as well. These are called header tags and you want to make sure that you have them:

Inserted in the body of the article, and

contain the keyword or key phrase you are writing about

If you are using the WordPress platform to write your blog, there will be a drop down box from the tool bar above the body text box. You will see header tags 1-6. For proper on page SEO you simply need to worry about an H1, H2 and H3 tag.

Generally, your title should serve as an h1 tag, but I would put one in the body of the article just to make sure that you have it covered. There is no order for this task, you may place the h3 tag first and the h1 tag last, just make sure they are in the article.

On Page SEO and Images

The search engines, and humans, like images so put some in your article. Generally speaking you can search the internet for images and you should be able to use them on your blog. There shouldn’t be any types of problems with you using images in a blog, but you should never grab an image online to place on a sales page, splash page or any other site you have created for commercial purposes.

When you have found an image that goes with your article simply insert it into the body of the article where you would like. With the WordPress platform you will be able to change the displayed title of your image and you will be able to set the alternate tag or “alt” tag to your key phrase. Images are a big deal for on page SEO and I usually do a little better when I put a couple in the article.

You can also make these images “clickable,” so you may want to inert a link back to your blog site or a different offer of some type. If you insert an external link to an opportunity program perhaps then you will want to make sure you make this a “no follow” link (see below for more).

On Page SEO: Inserting Hyperlinks

For proper on page SEO you will want to insert an internal link in your post. This link will go back to another page on your blog, perhaps containing just the main domain name. This link is a “follow” link which simply means that you don’t need to do anything other than place it within the text somewhere. I will generally try and use an anchor text that will relate to another page or post and insert the link that points to that post. I’ve heard that this will help out the other post, but I couldn’t tell you for sure.

For external links, may a link to an affiliate product or an opportunity program you are marketing, for on page SEO purposes you will need to make this link a “no follow” link. To do this you simply need to go to the html editor (click the HTML tag at the top of the text box in WordPress) and scroll down to where the link is which should start off with <a href=… If you place the following behind the “a” it will look like this:

<a rel=”nofollow” href=http://example.com>no follow link</a>

The no follow code you insert: rel=”nofollow” will automatically be placed in the appropriate location of the hyperlink and your on page SEO concerning this element will be complete.

Make sure you don’t forget to do this with those “clickable” images where you have placed an external link to.

On Page SEO: Bold, Italic and Underlines

One of the on page SEO techniques that some software like SEO Pressor use will be to bold the first key phrase, put the second one in italics and underline the third time the key phrase is used. This practice once upon a time believed to sort of act as a “look at me” sign for the crawlers to identify the key phrases and key words and draw attention to them. One way of saying, “this is a relevant article for these keywords,” sort of deal. Does it still work? Not sure really, but once again I use SEO Pressor and it automatically does this.

Plugins for On Page SEO

I’ve already mentioned SEO Pressor and this is a fine tool, don’t regret making this purchase at all. The single site license is $47 and the multiple site license runs $97 and probably still worth it for no other reason than it shows you how well you do your on page SEO by scoring your post. Good feedback until you learn how to do this stuff.

There is also a plugin on WordPress that you can use that will tell you how to optimize your page as well and this plugin is free (although you can and probably should make some sort of donation to the developer). The plugin is titled “WordPress SEO by Yoast,” and I would get this plugin and learn to use it if I didn’t want to make the SEO Pressor plugin mine with a purchase. This plug in works very well and will virtually do the same thing a premium plugin will do.

Ultimately, on page SEO is nothing more than learning a few elements and making sure that you use them when you write your blog post or articles. Good and consistent use of these on page SEO techniques will ensure that your blog posts or articles will stay at the top of the search engine results pages (SERP’s) and in turn provide you with plenty of free targeted visitors.